Recent reviews by Blizzy

If you have a nostalgia itch for early-2010s Flash platformers, this is a great way to scratch it. Mechanics are unique enough to be interesting, and though I had a bit of frustration with them in the beginning, honestly I think that was just a case of "get good" because by the time I went back for the full-game speedrun achievement everything felt very fluid and smooth. Music is good too. Overall the game isn't a mindblowing experience, but it definitely is worth a play if you enjoy that vibe.

First off: this game does have a pretty great art style, and the soundtrack is nice. However, that is about where the positives end. As for everything else,
- Menu design is unintuitive and key rebinding sucks. These are related because if you rebind the keys, it also rebinds the menu controls when you're in-game... but *not* on the main menu before you've loaded a save. But the menus also don't really tell you how they work in general.
- The difficulty curve is completely backwards, with the first 2 levels being basically the hardest in the game and the other 14 being comparatively milder (except for two in the middle). Once you struggle through the beginning, you kinda steamroll everything else.
- Aside from the start-of-level story text dump, most text in the game can't be skipped, and you have to wait like 10 seconds each time to get through it. (Hint: it does not take 10 seconds to read.) Also whenever you start a new game, which may happen quite a bit at the start due to the lives system and the aforementioned difficult first level, you are forced to watch about 10 seconds of the "how to play" video and then endure a 12 second cutscene before you're allowed to try again. Ugh.
- The story is pretty uninspired, and the main character is a massive tool--pretty much toxic masculinity incarnate. Despite this, the second-player character (who I don't recall ever actually being introduced? I don't think he's in the intro cutscene, and then suddenly he's there in the story at the start of the second level...) loves him and fawns over him, despite receiving nothing but rudeness and dismissal in return. Wacky.
- Oh, and there are several places where you're forced to make blind leaps into places with enemies or, in one case, an instakill trap. Very cool. Not to mention how enemies can spawn directly on the other side of a pit as you're trying to jump over it, bumping you into it and instakilling you...

Yeah. The art and music are nice, but that doesn't make a good game. Stay away.

From a design perspective, this is honestly one of the most impressive games I've ever seen. Wonderfully exploits the differences between hyperbolic and Euclidean space, but doesn't require any geometric background in order to play and succeed. Features an insane breadth of lands and mechanics, but introduces them slowly enough and in enough detail that it never feels overwhelming, and almost all of the lands are real winners. As far as cons go, it does eventually become a bit of a slog running through a bunch of lands you're already very familiar with in order to get to new places, and I've had to reference the wiki to expand on some right-click tooltips a couple times... but the gameplay and area design is honestly top notch. Big recommend.

wonderful momentum-based controls that are easy to learn but hard to master, no shortage of content (to put it lightly), overall extremely good level design (especially considering the breadth of content), and many layers of challenge which make the game suitable for both casual and hardcore audiences. buy this if you enjoy platformers.

This game is fantastic. It's definitely not a typical precision platformer and doesn't feel like one, but is more... adventure pinball for speedrunners? Something along those lines. Regardless, it's fantastic. If you like precision games at all, get this--it's worth full price.

Overall a good game. The aesthetic is great, the writing is fun, the gameplay loop is engaging, the first several hours are in general fantastic... BUT, it does have some notable points of frustration which come into light in the second half of the game once the difficulty ramps up:

- It's bit too easy to leave a room by accident, which sucks because there are several things that can drop that spoil once you leave the room. On a related note, trying to pick up the item you'd like to pick up can be a bit of an ordeal.

- Your attacks are long and can't be cancelled, and the game has substantial input buffering for attacks. So, you can easily get hit because you tapped one time too many and locked yourself into an attack, instead of being able to change your mind before the second attack starts and dodge out of the way.

- Hitstun is also very long, which means you can get combo'd. *Hard*. I once got knocked down by an attack, then blown up by an explosion while stunned, which rolled me into a fire, where I got punched again by a different enemy. 2 whole health gone. Ouch.

So, I recommend this with an advisory: USE ASSIST MODE!! The benefits you get are adjustable, it does not trivialise the game, it does not hurt you in any way (nor does it disable achievements), and it makes these issues much more palatable. Particularly the options to increase invincibility frames, both in general and on your dodge roll.

One of the best roguelites I've played. Highly recommend to anyone with even tangential interest in roguelites or hack 'n' slash games.

Pros:
- upgrade progression feels meaningful, but is by no means required in order to complete a run
- combat is very smooth to play and boss design is excellent
- have literally never felt like i lost a run to BS or bad luck, which is more than i can say even about other great roguelites like Rogue Legacy, The Binding of Isaac, or Dead Cells
- great writing, story, voice acting, and art, and the music's not half bad either. seriously this game has it all
- also everyone is hot

Cons:
- not quite as much variety in runs as the aforementioned Isaac/Dead Cells
- a couple gods have decidedly better boons than others

But that's about it. And really, neither of those cons is even that bad--toying around with heat challenges, different weapon aspects and the like still provides plenty of entertainment and you have at least *something* to look forward to from every god.

Already thought this game was wonderful and innovative, came back to finish it a while later and found a certain secret area which blew my mind all over again. Strong recommend, worth full price for sure.

Honestly, I think that this weakens the experience of the original Steins;Gate (which I thought was incredible). While the idea of it is wonderful--with no spoilers for this or the original, it explains the central plot point of the original's true ending and explores the ramifications of the events prior--the writing and plot development is significantly weaker, and it has far too much fanservice and fluff. Some scenes in this... really sucked, honestly, which is not a problem I recall having with the first one.

It also has a much broader scope than the original, which in my opinion misses out on the thing that made it so brilliant. The original tells the story of one man suddenly plunged into a world beyond knowledge or comprehension, and the agony he goes through as that world closes in around him. The key here is contrast. It's the stark difference between the "before" and the "after" that lets it work its magic. Here, the scale starts big, and... really doesn't change a whole lot. It's so much less visceral.

It's not all bad. It does have a couple great scenes and a couple great songs in the soundtrack, but I just don't think those scenes and songs are worth going through the rest of the VN. Just use your imagination to explain that plot point from the original's true ending, like you would before this were released. It's fine without having this game to explain it.

The save import is completely broken for me and lost over half of my progress. My complete AB+ save is still there when I load up AB+, but Repentance seems to be loading a save from vanilla Rebirth and none of the fixes I've been suggested have done anything. Cannot recommend this until this is fixed.